


What Are You?

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Demon Deals, Demons, Gun Kink, Other, Self-Hatred, nonsexual kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7301587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What is this?” asks the smoke, quietly.</p>
<p>Percy swallows, on his knees, hanging in the endless dark of the void. He knows he’s dreaming, knows none of this is real – but none of that changes the fact he’s alone, and it’s dark, and the smoke is so thick around him that he can barely breathe. “It’s- my gun,” he says.</p>
<p>(In which Percy and Orthax have... a little chat, about the naming of things.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Are You?

**Author's Note:**

> so, uh. percy and guns, huh…? it’d be a shame if, uh. someone just. put one of those… right in his mouth… and he was kinda into it in like. a weird, self-depreciating sort of way…… [sweats copiously]

“What is this?” asks the smoke, quietly. 

Percy swallows, on his knees, hanging in the endless dark of the void. He knows he’s dreaming, knows none of this is real – but none of that changes the fact he’s alone, and it’s dark, and the smoke is so thick around him that he can barely breathe. 

“It’s- my gun,” he says, voice as rough and raw as he feels, peeled back to the bones and held open. Stripped of his coat, he feels half-naked, exposed. _Vulnerable_. It’s not a feeling he enjoys, and it makes the breath catch at the back of his throat, half-choking on the smoke he breathes out with every exhale.

“But what _is_ it?” asks the smoke, somehow both endlessly patient, and irritated by how _slow_ he’s being. Barely-there hands twist the flashing length of silver around, turning the gun over and over. The names along the barrels wink at him, dark scars in the glinting metal.

Percy swallows again. He knows those names as well as he knows his own – better. Traces them with a shaking thumb, every evening, and vows revenge anew beneath the setting sun. “A… a weapon.”

“Good.” The voice never changes, still a low, dull roar, hard to discern over the background howl of the void, the bracken-crackle of the smoke, but somehow Percy feels as though he’s pleased it. “And what, Percy, are _you_?”

He bites back the urge to correct it, to rattle off his full name as easy as breathing, precocious and pretentious and so _useful_ for fitting easily into people’s preconceived notions of what he is. He’s not given this _thing_ permission to call him Percy, it has no right- but argument is futile, here, and the question he’s been given is difficult. The answer to this one is less clear, and requires all his concentration to find an answer for.

“A… a weapon?” he tries, half-hopeful – because he is, he knows, is as dangerous an object as his own creations. They’re more alike than he cares to admit, his gun and himself, both volatile and destructive and something not entirely meant for this world. In the kickback after the shot, the flash-boom of igniting powder, they both run hot and angry and _hungry_ , single-minded in their purpose.

Though it’s not a parallel he likes to dwell on, he knows that, in some ways, both he and his gun are merely weapons of this smoke, this darkness. Extensions of its will, the long reach of its arm, its very own chess pieces made specially for murder.

He tries not to think about that, whenever possible.

Insubstantial hands grab at his hair, tugging, pulling his head back. More grab at the front of his shirt, at his chin, the smoke curling around him as close as a lover, a mockery of an embrace, constrictor-coiling. _The wrong answer, then_ , he thinks, as ashen fingers press gun-barrel warm against the exposed length of his throat, a hiss and crackle of smouldering embers as they make contact.

“What _are_ you, Percy?”

There are so many things he is – orphan, murderer inventor, mercenary, gunslinger, teammate, a tight tangle of anger and vengeance and bleeding tenderness, a mess of thorns so dense and sharp he’s surprised anyone manages to touch him without slicing themselves to ribbons. A weapon. A monster in the making. A _danger_ , to himself and everyone else.

“A holster,” he whispers, and open his mouth.

There’s laughter all around him, soft and mocking and the roar of a forest fire, but the gun slides into his mouth all the same. It’s heavy, _so heavy_ – and he doesn’t remember it weighing this much when he holds it, when he’s awake. In the smoke’s hands, though, it’s enough to pin his tongue to the floor of his mouth, enough to force his jaw open wide until it aches. “I was thinking of _puppet_ ,” says the smoke, amused. “Perhaps _trigger finger_. But _holster_ works, too.”

Percy’s gut twists, writhes with regret and the urge to snatch his words back- and with something dark and unsettled and _hungry_. But the word is out there, now, and there’s a gun in his mouth, unnaturally heavy, stopping any more falling out of his lips. There’s nothing he can do but kneel there, hanging in the dark, held in a snake’s-coil of smoke.

The metal warms against his tongue, the drool pools in the hidden spaces of his mouth and drips out the corners in thin strings, the smoke clutches tighter. Every breath is full of it, thick and choking and almost unbearable. The heat of it scorches his throat, burns his lungs – and he takes it, all of it, without complaint, lets the gun rest and the smoke burn and knows that this- this is what he was made for.

This is what he _deserves_.

He wakes gasping, panting, a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead and an oily, unsettled, _hungry_ ache in his guts. The night is quiet, still, endlessly dark – and for a moment he thinks he hears it, the crackle-roar of the smoke, still echoing in his ears, the laughter worming its way into the deep, dark spaces in his skull.

It’s just the fire, though, burning bright orange-red in the middle of their makeshift camp. The air he breathes in is cool, clean. Empty. It doesn’t burn his lungs, doesn’t grate at the softness of his throat. No hands grab at him, hold him. There is no slowly-warming metal oil-bitter and- not comforting, _not comforting_ , against his tongue.

He tells himself, as he touches a thumb to his lower lip, fights the urge to press it _inside_ , that he’s not disappointed. He falls asleep trying to convince himself that’s not a lie.


End file.
